All posts tagged: iraq photography

To Western eyes, Iraq is a nightmarish hurricane of blood, bullets and bombs. We see it through the lens of a news media that still uses the motto “if it bleeds, it leads”. Editors salivate at shots of mutilated corpses, masked men committing horrific acts of violence and apocalyptic threats about the end of civilisation. Yet amidst this carnage there’s a story going untold, one that could have broader consequences on the world than these acts of violence. It’s a tale of mass population displacement, of how conflict percolates into everyday life, of the consequences and reverberations beyond the news headlines. Map of Displacement showcases collaborative photographic projects between the Kurdish Iraqi photographers of Metrography, Iraq’s first internal photography agency, and international journalists. The website covers topics as disparate as a Christian and Sunni family learning to coexist under the same roof; barbers threatened with having their fingers cut off if they keep cutting hair in Western styles; and Yazidi women kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. “In Iraq, the ISIS crisis doesn’t only mean death and destruction, …